


holding on to something lost

by alpacas



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: And cuddling!, Gen, also contains: bad words!, and snot!, bad german!, caleb's pov being a black hole that warps all it touches!, does contain: people expressing emotions in a fairly mature way!, holy shit 'that's it' is a real character tag i'm laughing, i was asked to write caleb comforting nott and the poor anon is getting this instead, maudlin emotions!, set during e54 but the episode itself is pretty irrelevant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-10
Updated: 2019-03-10
Packaged: 2019-11-15 06:51:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18068651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alpacas/pseuds/alpacas
Summary: "Nott the Brave," he says, his voice shaking, not to address but to remind her. [e54.]





	holding on to something lost

**Author's Note:**

> **anonymous said:**  
>  If you're looking for fic prompts, maybe something soft where Caleb comforts Nott? Since there's a lot of fic where it's the other way around and my girl deserves some reciprocation. I just love the way you write them both. So. Much.
> 
>  
> 
> as usual, i get a fic prompt and veer WILDLY OFF TO THE SIDE. but i mean! they do technically cuddle!
> 
>  
> 
> set during the most recent episode — e54 — (i'll edit this with the episode title when it gets one) but that isn't too important and there aren't really specific spoilers as much as setting notes. there are, of course, all the spoilers for nott and caleb's backstories. 
> 
> title adapted from kathryn calder's "slip away."

* * *

 

 

 

Caleb can't sleep.

It isn't that Fjord and Caduceus are unpleasant roommates. Stallmates. The straw provided them is reasonably fresh, and the stall itself is nearly as large as the Tiny Hut — but shared with only two others, not seven restless bodies. Caleb sets up his bedroll along the right well, casts _Alarm_ over both stalls, and then fails to fall asleep.

He listens to Fjord's restless tossing, wary for sudden sprays of ocean water. He listens to Caduceus's deep, heavy breathing, and while the sound is oddly soothing, sleep fails and fails and fails to come. He adjusts and readjusts his position. Reviews his spells. Summons Frumpkin to his stomach and rubs his cat ears. Wills himself to sleep. It doesn't come.

Someone in snoring loudly the next stall over. Caleb lies with his eyes open in the dark. Shortly after midnight, he feels the twinge in his head of his _Alarm_ spell being tripped on the girl's stall — not the ringing of danger, but an alert that someone has slipped out of its protection. Beau, on her way to her lesson. He rolls onto his side.

A few minutes later, he feels the twinge for a second time. Nott or Jester going to the outhouse, perhaps. A moment later, the alarm spell over the _boy's_ stall twinges, although Caleb had not heard approaching footsteps.

He shifts up onto his elbows, only half surprised to see a pair of yellow eyes watching him from the doorway. Caleb cannot see more of her than that, but he mouths: _Nott?_ , knowing she can see more clearly in the dark.

She slips away from the door, leftwards, towards the barn's door, and unbidden, Caleb untangles himself from his bedding and follows.

There's a small, dirty courtyard space between the Four Corners and the barn. A water pump and the privies take up most of that space, along with a few haphazard piles of straw; even at this hour, the Four Corners is brightly lit and Caleb can hear music playing. Nott is sitting on one of the messy bales of hay, waiting for him.

"I didn't wake you up, did I?" she asks fretfully as he sits carefully beside her.

"I am having difficulty sleeping tonight," he admits.

"Because we're all split up and we could get kidnapped and murdered since we're not in the hut thing?"

"That… had not exactly been at the forefront of my mind, but it is now, thank you," Caleb says slowly.

Nott leans forward, her shoulders hunched. She isn't wearing her armor, and she looks smaller than usual, even in the dim splashes of light from the tavern, the shadows elongating her cheekbones and the birdlike bones of her collar and shoulders. Caleb realizes only now how _thin_ she is — wearing just her undershirt and arm bandages, without armor and cloak and hood and mask to hide her and give her weight.

They've been traveling and travel means smaller meals, but — he tries to remember if he noticed her eating dinner. "Little one, how are you feeling?" he asks carefully.

"Oh, I'm okay," she says dismissively. "Beau wanted to borrow my armor and so she woke me up, and I wanted to check and make sure _you_ were okay, I guess, since normally I can keep an eye on you at night and stuff."

"I'm well," Caleb says, letting the familiar beats of Nott's fretting wash over him. He might take it personally, as an insult, from someone else. Her constant assumption he is near death. He hardly hears the words, just the underlying message.

Well, he thinks. _Gut_ , which means good but also well, which means good but also _Brunnen_. Since waking up almost six years ago, he had made the conscious decision to speak and even think in Common, and now it comes naturally, aside from distracted slips, lazy substitution of _yeah_ for _ja_. Well. Brunnen.

He knows how to let Nott's fretting wash over him, but he is uncertain how to turn it back to her. Which is not to say Caleb never tries, does not wish to. "You and I, we have not had a chance to speak, just you and I, in some time," he says.

"That's true," Nott says, and he and she both think, he's certain, to the past few weeks: sleeping in magical huts, entering Xhorhas, passing through endless tunnels, standing in the fields of Felderwin. Standing in the basement of her home, burnt and ruined. Caleb had not, of course, known it was her home. But hers, of course, was burnt to ashes by someone else.

She shifts on the hay. "So have you heard anything about bookstores in this place? I don't think goblins and stuff are big readers, but the people here are weird, so…"

"How are you feeling?" he asks, looking at her look stubbornly at her lap.

Her face is hidden, but her ears twitch and flatten. "I'm fine. You really need to sleep, you know, you won't be at your best if you don't sleep, it's very important. We could get you drunk, that usually does it for me…"

"Nott," he says.

Her ears twitch.

"You — you were very upset with Jester earlier," he says carefully.

"That was just — that's just a spat between girl pals. A girl fight. It doesn't mean anything," Nott says, digging her fingers into the back of her other hand, ripping at the bandages there. After nearly a week of not wearing his own bandages, Caleb's arms have started to feel less clammy and exposed, look less sickly-white. He has always known, of course, that Nott covers herself, arms and legs, neck and sometimes face, in bandages as well, but it is as though he is only just seeing them for the first time.

A way of hiding herself from prying eyes, he had assumed. He had not questioned it: they have never questioned one another. He thinks about telling her: _yes, I know, the scars on my arms are not so visible — they feel much more so, but I know they are not. But they are visible to_ me. _And so I kept them out of my sight._ Her scars, her skin, are visible to all.

Her anger, her fear, the way she repeats the phrase _my husband_ , never his name, the way she jokes and waits eagerly for Jester to suggest sending him a message — they are just as visible. Just as unremarked upon.

But they have never questioned one another. Perhaps she was right on the riverbank. Perhaps some things are chains, and perhaps they should.

Caleb sighs, leaning forward, resting his forearms on his knees.

"See? You _are_ tired," Nott says, eager to keep the subject on him, her worries on him, and Caleb often so pleased to accept the attention, the warm water bath of her care.

He turns to look at her, hunched forward, at eye level. "It is natural to be terrified, even for one who is brave."

"I don't know —" she says unconvincingly, immediately looking away. Her eyes are bright in the dim light, her pupils wide in her catlike irises. "Of course I'm terrified. I'm fucking terrified. Caleb, they're probably going to _kill him_ , and if they're not —"

"They have not hurt him at all so far," he says quickly.

"That's even worse! That means they're waiting for something, and this could all be some huge trap, you know? There are a lot of things — we could all _die tomorrow_ , or everyone will decide this is too hard, and I'll have to go on alone, or I'll have to go back and tell — and tell my _son_ that he's an _orphan_ , and I don't even _know_ Edith, she's just a random fucking neighbor, she might not be taking care of him right, but it's not like he even remembers me so who am I to even say, and we sent him to Alfield and there are _regular gnolls there_."

Nott stops to take a heaving, panicked breath, and Caleb can practically see her heart pounding through her tiny body, and he hardly knows where to start.

"Oh, and there's also — I mean, _look_ at me, we're also assuming Yeza isn't going to try and murder me for being one of the things who killed Veth when he sees me…"

"That's _you_ ," Caleb says harshly, although the name causes a tiny internal flinch in the back of his heart: _Veth_. He's tried to look at her a few times. Not to call her the name, but to try to overlay the information: the halfling woman with her name and blue eyes, Nott with her matted hair and long fingers. When he thinks of myself he is able to think _my name was once Bren_ without too much feeling, but Veth is yet a foreign person. Not _Nott_ , who had felt for the past year almost as though she was his.

"Not to him I'm not," Nott says darkly, echoing his thoughts, to his shame. She twists her hands, plays with the ring on her right hand. Her right ring finger. Not her left. Another thing he'd never realized mattered.

"If he does, he is a fool," Caleb says.

"Do you think we should go back?" Nott asks him plaintively, peering up to him. "Go back to the Empire? We can — we could check on Beau's family, like she wanted." He's staring at her, gaping, he's not certain his heart is even beating, and her face crumples and she looks back away. "Maybe that's smarter? That way no one will — will get hurt, and…"

"Your husband?" He feels his throat tighten. "Your _son_?"

"He already — he's already as good as an orphan, he…" Nott's voice is shaking, her entire body is.

"Your son still has you," Caleb says weakly.

" _Look_ at me!"

"I am," he says as firmly as he can, which is not very: he feels his heart racing, and yet the blood does not seem to be reaching his limbs, his fingertips: he is cold and empty and shaking.

"No," she says, and her ears go flat against her head, "no, no, no you're not. You see — you see _Nott_ , but that's not what anyone else — I am a _goblin_ and I am bad and I am _scary_ and I have crazy fucking teeth and to a _little boy_ , to any normal person, I'm a… a…" and Nott looks around, wildly, glassy-eyed, at the courtyard in a city in Xhorhas filled with beast races, filled with goblins like herself.

"Nott the Brave," he says, his voice shaking, not to address but to remind her.

He is not surprised when her eyes fill with tears; he had seen it coming, feels the selfsame tightness in his own throat, wetness in his own eyes, brought on by sympathy and his own terrors, and his hands are still very, very cold.

"I'm _not_ ," she says angrily, hunching herself into a ball, knuckles pressing into her forehead and elbows jutting, sharp, her ears pressed flat to her head, the bumps of her spine peeking out over the top of her undershirt. She's _tiny_. She's skinny and small, all gristle and bird-bones.

Caleb does not know what to do. He knows what he wishes to do, but not in words: just a strong itchy desperate feeling, to grab and pull and hold, a physical feeling, a physical desire, cold and hot all over him. He does not know what to do with it. What to do. Only that she is shaking and he is desperately sad and weary.

He picks her up. She weighs nothing, she doesn't fight, he does not move her far: just the few inches between them, awkward, half dragging her, and she unfurls herself and throws her arms around him as he draws her onto his lap; her fingers dig hard into his shoulder-blades, she buries her face into his lapel and scarf. He wraps his arms around her and is afraid he might crush her, can feel her heart through the thin layers of her back. All her ribs against his bare forearms. She's sobbing.

Caleb looks up at the cloudy sky and doesn't know what else to do. His eyes too are damp, his face itches, he can feel her tears and snot wetting his neck. "We will not leave them, you and I," he says, his voice tight and quiet, and he thinks it in Zemnian: _Wir werden nicht. Ich. Niemals_. He wishes she spoke it — an idle, strange thought, as Nott trembles against him, still weeping.

 _Even if the others, even if they choose to turn back, you and I, we are together, we have agreed_ , he thinks, translates it into Common and back to Zemnian; there is no use pondering if the others will or will not, how likely or unlikely — betrayal is _always_ possible, always, but he will not. Never. ( _Nie_ ) (Not Nott.)

"Just you and I, as it used to be, that's fine as well," he says, in hopeless summation: he doesn't know if she's capable of listening. He conjugates words in his head: I continue, you continue, we are continuing. I go, you go, we're going.

Nott stops crying but does not move, he feels the dampness and her forehead pressed against him, the strangely constant heat of her body, her heart still thrumming against the back of her ribs. She's faster than him. All of her. Bony and sharp and quick and dear.

She doesn't speak and so he doesn't either, and after a moment she adjusts herself, turns so she's not pressed into him but sitting sideways on his lap, her right side leaning into his chest, her cheek pushing against the collar of his coat. He keeps his arms around her waist.

"I've been trying to drink a little less lately, you know," Nott says after a long while, her voice cloudy with congestion.

It seems a bit random, but of course it isn't. "I noticed, yes, I thought you might have been."

"Not… not completely," she says, and he feels her face twist against him as she looks to see what he thinks.

"I am the last person to talk of bad habits."

She doesn't quite laugh, but almost. "I get so fucking scared, Caleb," she whispers, pulling up one leg so her foot is balanced on Caleb's thigh, she's using him outright as a chair now and he doesn't mind. "I don't want to give up,"

"I know," he says quickly, in case she thinks he believed her before.

"— but I just feel so shitty about it sometimes. I lied and, and it's like none of you — it's like you didn't know me, I tricked you, and now I'm dragging everyone into this…"

He has wondered it too. Of course he has. Is she still Nott? Still the goblin girl he knows, the girl by his side, curled up at his feet, landing them both in trouble and mischief? Or is she Veth? And what exactly — who exactly — is she? _Veth_. Even the name is difficult. There is no _th_ in Zemnian. He has to force himself, over pronounce, or else say _Vess_. A tiny, additional burr. He's never struggled with _Nott_.

And he's had weeks now to consider the problem. "Nott, my friend, you are a very — you are a very bad liar, and so I think you didn't trick us at all."

"I _lied_ ," she says, affronted, the way only the honest are by falsehoods. The way Caleb is never bothered when he has to avoid the truth. He finds himself faintly smiling.

"We are all liars. It's, ah, it's almost our slogan, really."

She sighs, losing her heat. "I just don't want anyone to _die_ for me. Over this. Not for me," she says again, still more softly, and he thinks of her small body in a manticore's mouth, of Nott appearing unsteady and bloody from the Happy Fun Ball, of a message in the jungle to leave her and run, and his whole body tightens —

But he is the last person to talk of bad habits.

She goes tense too, she's so close, she can feel the stiffness in his spine, and Caleb forces himself to relax, to stop trembling, to look up at the cloudy sky. Forces himself to stop trying to calculate who of the Mighty Nein would die for Nott's cause, who can be used and manipulated for her sake. Anyone. Everyone. Himself.

"We will not give up," he says with a tired sigh, his smile gone.

"You and me?"

"All of us." He gestures towards the barn; she sounds plaintive, she wants him to say _yes_ , and he wants her to remember he is not the only one who loves her. The need to manipulate is long, long past.

She lets it sit there, unchallenged, but says nothing more. Neither does he. They sit in silence for a moment, and then Caleb starts: gently, carefully, Nott touches his arm where it crosses over her lap. Traces a scar with her night vision and a clawed finger that can rip flesh from bone, so gently it's nearly ticklish. He tries not to flinch or pull away. Waits nervously for her to ask a question or demand an answer.

She says nothing. Maybe she's just a little bored, a little restless. But he doubts that. He feels weary now — this conversations always leave him a little tired — but also strangely lighter, some fear he'd been holding without realizing dissipated, made lighter. He hadn't known how worried he was about Nott until this moment. Until she'd started to cry.

He sighs without quite meaning to.

"You need sleep," Nott says, turning it back to him, her sign that she too has reached her emotional limits, the edge of how much she can stand to talk about herself. "You can sleep in the girl's room, you know, Jessie and the others won't mind."

"No, it is fine, I will sleep with Fjord and Caduceus," Caleb says, and he can't help a small, tired smile at the implied invitation.

"You won't stay up worrying?" She doesn't move and neither does he.

"I have cast _alarm_ , you will cast _message_ if anything happens, we are reasonably safe, I think, so long as no one has bad dreams."

"That isn't what I meant," Nott says, scolding, and now she wriggles free of his loose grasp, hops down to the ground and adjusts her mussed clothing and hair self consciously. He slumps forward, watching.

"Nott the Brave," he says. She looks over, sideways, one hand in her tangled hair. Her hair falls long and uneven, still untrimmed from her fall in the lava a week ago. "If you need to run away in the middle of the night, I will run with you, of course."

She smiles crooked and looks away. He cannot imagine her as anyone but herself.

They return to the barn, to their separate stalls, Caleb settling himself into his cold bedroll and cold straw. Fjord snores once and turns to his side on his right. He summons Frumpkin and settles himself down, waiting only a few seconds before the mental twinge of Nott crossing the threshold of the girl's stall reaches him.

He closes his eyes and feels like now he might be able to fall asleep…

There's a second twinge in the back of his mind, and a magical whisper in his ear: _Iloveyou,goodnight_. Beat. _You can reply to this — aahhgh, just go to sleep, okay?_

 _Goodnight_ , Caleb whispers back anyway, in Zemnian.

I will, you will, we shall.


End file.
